Alteryx Server Ideas

A better process Needed for Alteryx Backup and restore.

1. Why do we have to stop the service to do a backup,? We cannot stop a service in Enterprise platform just to do a backup.  we are not able to take backups because our jobs will be running 24X7 We Run jobs on Alteryx Server,
2. All of a Sudden our Windows server crashed and we lost all the data, The backup we have of Mongo DB was not perfectly restored on the new server which breaks the workflow, connections etc  due to encryption....
3. what is the purpose of backup if we cannot restore on a new server in case of DR

Please fix it ASAP,

Currently you can only view the workflow results / history for other users workflows that are scheduled and the schedule is shared in the collection.

A lot of our workflows are set up to run on-demand, some as analytical apps and some as standard workflows. 

The first point of reference when a user experiences an issue should be to view the workflow results, but currently this is not possible and just gives an error "Access Denied" even when the tick box is selected within Workflow settings.

My suggestion is that you should be able to see the workflow results of any workflow that is shared with you (regardless of whether it is scheduled or run on-demand) as this would make fault finding and user support much easier.

Thanks

Rob

In Gallery, I'd like to see the execution log in the workflow results, i.e. what you get if you run the workflow from Designer.  I'd like to see this whatever the status of the workflow completion.  Would be useful to assess warnings and the performance of components within the workflow.  Also would give me useful stats about records loaded etc.

For large implementations of Alteryx - you'd want to have a live control-center view that allows you to see:

- The state of health of all the server components

- the depth of the queue in the controller

- Jobs failing vs. succeeding.

While this can be done by running alteryx jobs, and by going and looking for problems - what we'd want is to have a heads-up control center view which is self-refreshing all the time so that administrators can be notified when there are issues.    And this should not be e-mail notification (it's too easy to miss an e-mail or an SNMP alert)

Think about a 40 inch monitor on a wall (like in a traffic control center)  that allows the server management team to see the state of health of the plant at a glance, and dive into issues without having to constantly be looking for them.    this is a critical capability for enterprise install-base and would be a very useful capability to add to the platform.

I would like the ability to add a workflow description on Alteryx server.  This step would be done after the workflow is published, this way future edits can be made without having to republish the workflow.  A checkbox to allow HTML content would also be appreciated.

Upon utilizing the Alteryx gallery to create and test an automation app in cooperation with other business areas, we found that the list of "recent modified files" that appears when selecting a file browse query has several issues, or areas in desperate need of improvement:

Not only does this list append new files to the bottom, resulting in a less than desirable experience when selecting files from this list across multiple occasions when testing, but the list eventually reaches a capacity where no new files can be shown. Furthermore, for processes that involve small modifications being made to a file or group of files that is fairly consistent in naming, a list of ambiguously named files will quickly cause confusion. If this type of small improvement is possible, please reach out to me about any avenues towards achieving it, or if there is a person or department to appropriately contact.

-John

Alteryx has its own version control built in - however in large Enterprise environments there is a requirement to be able to use the version control platform that already exists.

In other words - when you install the server - you are asked:

Do you want to use Alteryx for version control, or your own SVN; GIT or a 4th custom option based on API integration (i.e. build this yourself based on a defined API).

This is very important to ensure that enterprise assets are maintained under the regimen of control that our Infosec & Auditors need, and the investment in making sure that Version Control contains all the right discipline; governance; etc - is all done in the enterprise Version Control platform.

Can we please extend Alteryx to have this flexibility so that we can cater to large Enterprise customers, and also anyone else who has a strict governance & change control requirement with existing infrastructure already in place?

If this is built as an independant layer and separated out from the core server slightly - it will be possibly to flexibly add other VC systems later (or provide companies with the ability to build their own).

Thank you

Sean

+ @Deeksha @BenBu @avinashbonu @revathi

A maintenance mode would not be luxury, so that the worker does not take any more new job and finishes those which it has in progress. to be able to stop this one more easily.

As an Admin, I would like to be able to see, from the Gallery, a single place where the history of workflows that have been run is displayed.  Right now I can only see workflows running or queued.  I would like to be able to look back at past executions and see status, runtime, errors, etc.

This data is currently available in Designer on our Alteryx Server.  But right now our system is just one environment.  I'm not sure if when we expand to multiple Gallery and Worker machines where I will have to look for workflow history.

Also, Workflow schedules can only be seen in Gallery, and not Designer.  So it would be nice to have everything in one place.

We would like Gallery admins to be able to add any workflow to a collection - not just the workflows they authored.

The purpose is to have one collection where we have a set of workflows that were reviewed and approved for audits.

Only the reviewer could add to this collection

Everyone on our team would benefit from having access to each other's workflows -- including workflow results and scheduling -- but publishing them to gallery where any user in the company can run it/ download it would present a security issue. Functionality that is not met with Collections. I found a similar idea, but not anything that encompasses the whole thing.

It would be of immense value to have a Team Gallery - something intermediate to the company gallery and the private collection. This would enable our team to have access to modify, publish, schedule workflows as a team.

This idea is to allow users to configure the file view option for a workflow running in the gallery that produces file outputs. Today, there are two views that a user can toggle between (see attachment), but I don't believe there's a way to change the default view. This idea is to change the setting as either a global gallery setting, on a workflow-by-workflow basis, or both.

We have end users that miss the drop down menu (and the file count next to the drop down, and the label we've added in the analytic app that says there will be two output files, and...), so they sometimes miss the second file entirely. Setting the default view to the "list view" rather than the drop down view could help alleviate that pain.

Note: The screenshots in the attachment show two Excel files that could be combined into one file with multiple tabs. This is a pain point for other workflows, as well, that produce outputs in multiple file formats.

I have a lot of workflows that depend on each other. Currently there's LOTS of hassle to effectively schedule a set of workflows to run subsequent.

Typically we run workflows (eg. product hierarchies) that would need to be completed before the next workflow should start (eg. sales data). We currently have some wonky workarounds that are high maintenance, but I would love to see this as a feature in the Gallery.

We have groups asking within our organization for ways to check the status of a running workflow in Gallery. They are wanting to understand which step in the process the workflow has completed for longer-running workflows.

They are looking for an experience similar to when running in Designer where they can see which tools have been completed. At the very least, they would like the log to be reported live and not shown at the end of the run.

Currently, the run feels like a black box where they do not know how close it is to completion or which steps it has made it through.

We have tried to build workarounds like the Email tool, but have been unsuccessful. For example, the Email tool does not send an Email until the workflow completes which defeats the purpose. The closest workaround is writing our own log along the way that can be reported on which is not a clean solution. 

Hi,

We have more clients that would like to prioritize their scheduled jobs based on run time and importance. 

It could be a simple priority number, that decides which job that need to run next. Further it could be nice to be able to allocate certain workers to certain jobs. 

I am looking forward to your feedback.

Daniel

Alteryx Server Security is So Complex and it's not easy to understand, Our IT/ Information Security feel that the security is not up to the standard and it's confusing. Also as an Alteryx Gallery Administrator, it's not easy to add users or delete users, Manage Groups and Studios.

The Security structure for any tool is like User-->group--Capability/Functionality. 

All we are requesting is keep up to enterprise standards.

Hello,

I've used a standard configuration to set up an Alteyx server. The gallery is available at https://alteryx.samplecompany.com/gallery

I'd would be really helpful if you enable to create a landing page at https://alteryx.samplecompany.com/ and add a possibility to host add extra pages. The easiest way to do this is to add an option to the Alteryx Server configuration wizard and read the pages from Alteryx workspace location.

Additionally, such landing page should have redirection from HTTP to HTTPs.

Best,

Piotr

We have at the moment our server configured to work with SAML credentials. Whenever a user sets the credentials option to be "User must specify own credentials" the validation is performed using the servers own local user, giving out an error whenever some workflows with SSO data access are uploaded.

It would be great if a window would pop up or credentials could be configured for the validation to aviod seeing the error to show up.